Viable alternative

Published: Monday, Sept. 9, 2013 5:30 a.m. CST

To the Editor:

Having five out of nine Supreme Court justices declare that Obama-care is not unconstitutional does not mean it is constitutional.

Having the president declare that we must accept a wildly unpopular health-care bill does not mean that it is in our best interests. Republicans have expressed opposition but have done little to present another plan.

Hundreds of waivers have been granted. Congress and the president have exempted themselves from its mandates. Congressional members and major unions that once supported the bill are now calling it destructive. We have learned that the claims made of the new health-care bill are false.

The major claims of lower insurance premiums and the coverage of all Americans in an insurance plan are not true. Rather than cut premium costs, they will soar. Rather than covering all citizens, more than 15 million will remain uninsured. What was once the greatest health-care system in the world will become run of the mill. The major costs associated with health care were not addressed in Obamacare. Obamacare was never about heath-care costs. It was about a takeover of one-sixth of our economy and the establishment of another government monopoly.

The answers to real health-care reform are not complex. We must increase medical-costs tax deductions, allow the purchase of insurance across state lines, eliminate government insurance mandates that account for as much as 50 percent of premium costs, support retail health clinics, institute tort reform, and provide vouchers for the working poor and the chronically uninsured.